by Leona Gom
“No.” Her voice was so low Bowden could barely hear her.
“You haven’t been in for more than two weeks. Later you’ll blame yourself.”
“I know.”
“She’s dying.”
Delacour’s finger pressed down harder on the table. “She doesn’t care if I come.”
“Of course she cares.”
“I don’t know what to say to her. Even when she was well we couldn’t talk to each other.”
“Well, find something to say.” She hated this bullying, this dogged insistence, but she knew she should keep pressing, because sometimes Delacour could be persuaded.
But today Delacour wouldn’t give in. “I can’t,” she said, turning her face away.
Bowden sighed, didn’t answer.
“I’ll see you at home then.” Delacour hesitated, fidgeting, as though she wanted to say something more, and then she turned abruptly and walked away, her teacher’s-robe flapping behind her, catching on the work table, flying up almost into the face of a startled doctor coming through the door.
Frustrated, disappointed, Bowden watched her go. Of course Jesse-Lee could be difficult, and Delacour had never gotten along with her as well as she had with her birth-mother; but, still, Jesse-Lee was her parent, and she was dying. Bowden’s parents had died young, in a lightning fire on their farm, and she would have given anything to have had the opportunity to say goodbye to them. She didn’t understand how Delacour could be so stubborn. Jesse-Lee was all the family she had left; how could she not want to take advantage of the little time left to them?
She told the others she was leaving. As she walked past Marsden, who was shaking her fist at the compuscreen, Bowden smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “Courage,” she said.
Marsden reached up and tapped her fist on Bowden’s hand. “Thank you,” she said grimly. “I need it.”
Bowden walked on, out of the ward, into the large corridor leading to Residential. She hadn’t actually planned to stop by Jesse-Lee’s today, but since she’d told Delacour she intended to, she decided she had better go. It wasn’t far — just down the south corridor and through the arboretum, where LaGlace, the mother of one of the nurses, sat in her wheelchair snoring so loudly it must be bruising the plants. Bowden was relieved LaGlace was asleep — awake she spent all her time recounting her dreams; everyone on Blue Ward was familiar with her voice chasing people down corridors, saying, “Wait! I haven’t told you what happened then!”
Bowden picked up the book LaGlace had dropped and put it on the shelf beside her, setting on top of it the green marker labelled “Arboretum,” so that when she woke up, disoriented as she always was, it would remind her where she was.
Jesse-Lee’s apartment was probably among the nicest in Hospital in terms of the care and expense that had gone into its design. But it was no secret to any of the patients that these apartments tended to be reserved for Palliatives. Death row, Jesse-Lee called it, when they’d asked her if she wanted one of them. But she’d said if a place was available it might as well go to her as to someone who was really sick. Every apartment had a view across the smooth curve of the coulees, and everything was arranged to allow for convenience and independence. The surveillance camera could be turned on or off by the occupant, so for someone like Jesse-Lee who valued her privacy the camera was off most of the time. The microphone, activated by the word “help,” was all the security she needed, she insisted.
“Yes,” Jesse-Lee’s voice said in answer to Bowden’s knock.
She was sitting reading on the sofa by the large sloping window. Outside Bowden could see the grasses in the coulees stirring, brushing against the invisible belly of the wind. Jesse-Lee was naked, as she liked to be in the summer, although it was something with which Bowden was still not comfortable. But she made herself look calmly at Jesse-Lee’s old and gravity-worn body, the large red scar on her abdomen from the last surgery which the doctor had thought she wouldn’t recover from, the wrinkled face which made no effort to hide its disappointment that Bowden was alone.
“Bowden,” she said.
“I’m sorry Delacour couldn’t come today.” She might as well get it said right away.
“Well,” Jesse-Lee said. “Serve her right if I die tonight.”
“You won’t,” Bowden said. “In fact, you’re getting better.” It was true. If the doctor’s original predictions had been right she would have been dead by now. But the illness gnawing at her would claim her eventually, and she had signed the nonintervention document several weeks ago.
Jesse-Lee sighed, and reached for the glass of juice on the end table beside her. Bowden could see her grimace from the spurt of pain it caused, but she knew better than to offer help.
“We’ll be going away on our holiday soon,” Bowden said. “Delacour got the tickets today.”
Jesse-Lee shrugged. “I don’t care. Go. I’ll try to die while she’s gone.”
“It’s not that she doesn’t care, Jesse-Lee. It’s because she can’t face it.”
“Can’t face it.” Jesse-Lee snorted. “She’s selfish, that’s all. Like me. When something gets in her way, if she can’t sidle around it somehow she’ll step on it.”
“That’s not fair.” It was the harshest thing Bowden had ever heard Jesse-Lee say about her daughter. She sank down into a chair by the door, even though she knew she shouldn’t do so unless invited.
“Well, you just be careful she doesn’t step on you, Bowden.” Jesse-Lee set the juice down; a few red drops leaped over the rim of the glass as she bumped it on the edge of the table. She grunted, scratched at her left breast, which swung lightly, describing an arc along the scar on her stomach. “I had a birth-child, you know,” she said suddenly, as though she’d only just remembered. “A lovely little thing. She lived for only a week. It broke my pissing heart.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Delacour never told me.”
“Delacour doesn’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
Jesse-Lee shrugged. “It was a long time before we had her. There just didn’t seem to be any reason.”
“I think she’d like to know.”
“Would she?” Jesse-Lee poked her finger absently into her right cheek, which was indented as though it had grown that way from years of prodding. “Well, if she ever comes to see me before my brain has jellied over I can tell her.”
“I’ll try to bring her,” Bowden said. “Before we leave.”
“Don’t make her come just to do you a favour. She can come on her own if she wants to.”
“She wants to. She’s just … afraid.”
“Afraid.” She drew out the word derisively. “Don’t be naive, Bowden. Delacour’s not afraid of anything.”
Bowden bit back a defensive reply. When she spoke, she could hear the phony cheeriness in her voice that others might consider professional but that she knew, and Jesse-Lee probably knew, was the opposite. “Well, I’m sure she’ll come of her own accord.”
Jesse-Lee smiled. It didn’t look entirely sincere. “Don’t worry about it, Bowden. I know you’re only trying to help, but —”
“Central, cue,” said a voice suddenly in the middle of the room. “Jesse-Lee, please answer.”
Bowden jumped to her feet and whirled to see who had spoken. And then of course she realized what it was, the communicator activated by the word “help.”
“Oh, shut up!” Jesse-Lee shouted at it.
There was silence for a moment, and then the voice said, “I assume this means you’re all right.”
“I’m with her, Central. Bowden. We were just talking. Sorry.”
“Okay. Clearing.”
They looked at each other and began to laugh, like naughty children caught in a prank, Jesse-Lee’s thin shoulders bowing forward like an old wire clothes hanger as she wheezed and snorted. Finally she sa
nk back and sighed. “Ah, merde. I suppose that added another year to my life.”
• • •
SHE THOUGHT OF JESSE-LEE when out the train window at Calgry Station she saw an old person in a wheelchair holding her arms out suddenly to someone, her daughter perhaps, who was getting off the train. She almost pointed the scene out to Delacour but stopped herself in time.
“When we come back, I’ll go see her. I promise,” Delacour had said, and Bowden knew that was the best she could do, that it would be useless to say, if she’s still alive then. Besides, Jesse-Lee’s condition seemed stable for now, and Bowden was reassured to hear from Central that Delacour had phoned in for a formal check the day before they left, although it had annoyed her, too, that Delacour had gone through Central, as though she didn’t trust Bowden’s reports or didn’t want Bowden to know she’d called.
Bowden looked out at what she could see of Calgry Station. It was hard to believe that once this had been the largest city in the state. Now its population was less than a thousand, and that included mostly the farmers around its edges. Parts of the abandoned inner city were still radioactive, primarily from the old Reddeer accident, which had blown much of its deadly cloud into the bowl the city held out to it. The rest of America had suffered, too, of course, but Calgry was the only city made uninhabitable almost overnight. In the distance she could see the remains of some of the concrete buildings, still stabbing up centuries later into the shimmery sky.
It was very hot. The breeze rummaging through the train did little to cool anyone. Delacour sat back on her seat with her eyes closed, her face pebbled with sweat. Her hair clung to her head like wet leaves sticking to the surface of a road. Bowden wondered if Delacour shared her uncertainties about the trip.
Two young people with a lot of luggage took the seat opposite them, and their careless good looks made her think of Hythe. Bowden had seen her again after that dreadful class, only three days ago, coming out of Bowden’s own apartment. Bowden had stopped still on the path, causing someone to bump into her, but she barely noticed — she kept watching Hythe’s long, pale body walk away from her. When she entered the apartment she waited for Delacour to mention it, but when she didn’t Bowden finally said, casually, “Was that your student I saw leaving?” and, “Oh, yes,” Delacour answered, just as casually. “She wanted to borrow one of my vidspools.”
The train began to move, and soon they were out in the country again. The breeze pushing strongly in her face cooled her off a bit, and she felt more comfortable, eager to see what was ahead. The farthest north she had ever been was Edmonton Station, and that was years ago, before they had extended the line to the Peace. Delacour revived slightly, too, and they stared out the window together at the thick green forests, the mountains leaping into view occasionally in the distance.
“I was named for an oldtown around here somewhere, I think,” Bowden said.
“Oh?” Delacour slapped at a mosquito on her arm. She missed.
“Were you named for one?”
“I don’t think so. Rhea didn’t tell about it, if I was.”
Rhea, Bowden thought. She’s thinking about her birth-mother, as though Jesse-Lee didn’t exist.
“Is Jesse-Lee named for an oldtown?” Bowden wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
“I don’t know. She might be.”
“You’ll have to ask her when you see her.”
Delacour sighed, loudly.
Bowden continued as though she hadn’t heard. “My mothers were both named for oldtowns. Medley-Barons and Codesa. Aren’t those nice names?” The mosquito Delacour had been swatting at was circling around Bowden. She waited until it had settled on her leg, then slapped it. She flicked it away with her fingernail.
“Yes. Very nice names.” Delacour yawned.
“I almost took Codesa’s name when I became an adult. I wish I had now. Bowden-Codesa. It would sound nice.”
“I like it better as it is. It’s simpler.” Delacour tipped back her head, and her eyelids slid down.
Bowden continued to stare out the window at the green rush of trees. But by the time they reached Edmonton Station she had fallen into a light sleep, the motion of the train swinging in her head; and she woke with a start, alarming dreams scattering around her, only when they were pulling out.
The two young people in the seat opposite them were gone, and in fact the whole train seemed nearly empty. Bowden felt a nudge of panic, travelling now where she had never been, everything strange and wild and uninhabited. But the new rail line was faster and smoother than what they had been on, and it reassured her to feel that confident, civilized beat of metal wheels beneath her.
They were veering west now, she could see on the progress map over her head, but even as she watched, the direction swung more and more to the north, and soon they were up into the Swan Hills. The forest outside had changed from deciduous to coniferous, old trees, an old forest, perhaps never cut. It awed her, the total emptiness, no one around them in any direction for several hundred kilometres, the train a small, determined capsule heading into the evening.
Delacour was poring over a temporary-book titled Current Excavations, and she learned over to Bowden and pointed to a page labelled “The Peace.” “They have a dig there,” Delacour said. “I remember they were quite excited at first because they found male remains that seemed to exceed by more than fifty years the latest known ones in Scandinavia. But then they did the artifact-scan and found it was only fifteen years or so later. Still — that’s significant enough, fifteen years. I had to change my lessons.”
Bowden nodded, trying to look interested. “It’s hard to imagine anyone living up here, so far in the wilderness.”
“It wasn’t wilderness then. There were several hundred thousand people here at one time.”
“And now?”
Delacour shrugged. “I don’t know. A few hundred at the Peace. A few hundred at Fairview — maybe more because of the hospital. A few hundred on the farms.” She turned back to her book on excavations. “How about if we stop at the dig tomorrow before we head out?” she asked. “It’s only a few kilometres out of the way.”
Bowden looked at her suspiciously. “This is our holiday. The dig has to do with your work.”
“I’d just like to see it. It might be interesting.”
“You knew about it all along, didn’t you? Is our holiday just an excuse for you to visit it?” It would explain, she thought, why Delacour, who had never particularly liked travelling, had wanted to come in the first place.
“Of course not!” Delacour’s voice rose angrily. “All right, we won’t go.” She slammed the book shut.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted this to be a holiday for us. With no work. Just for us.”
“It’s okay. I said we won’t go.” Delacour turned to look out the window at the westerly sun blistering the lake, and all Bowden could do was stare helplessly at the back of her head, her rumpled hair bristling at the edges.
By the time they reached the Peace they had both dozed off again, and one of the crew had to wake them and tell them to detrain. They stumbled sleepily down the steps, Bowden turning and looking back at the train with a kind of frightened longing. They were on their own now, a thousand kilometres from home. If Delacour hadn’t strode purposefully ahead Bowden might have run back to the train, wanting only to return to the comfort of her own apartment, her own predictable city. She felt like crying, the fatigue of the last fourteen hours tangling her feet on the rutted, unpaved streets.
They found the Trail Company easily enough only a block from the station, and after they checked in, the manager, a small, dark person with feathers woven into her hair, escorted them to the hotel, where they discovered the electricity had been turned off for the day, so they sat in their room in the dusty twilight eating the sandwiches the Trail Company had provided.
“W
ell,” Delacour said. “Tomorrow will be better.”
Bowden nodded, too tired and disappointed to speak.
But the next day was better. Once they got their horses and supplies and had climbed out of the Peace valley along the winding Shaftsbury Trail, Bowden felt a rush of exhilaration at seeing the huge river pumping along below them, the air brimming with morning bird song, the suede greenness extending as far as she could see. She liked the feel of the horse clamped between her legs, the way it responded like the horses of her childhood to the pressure of knees, the twist of the reins, as though they were both remembering skills learned long ago. She was pleased to see she was a better rider than Delacour, and she gave excessive instructions until Delacour said she would scream if Bowden said anymore. But they were happy with each other, pointing out things in the river valley to each other, saying, look, look, feeling wonder again like children. Bowden couldn’t believe that yesterday she had wanted only to go home.
They stopped for lunch at the spot recommended on their Trail Company map, and it made them feel reassured and competent, knowing that if they could keep to the schedule they could also choose not to. They sat on the riverbank watching several deer grazing far below, and Delacour brought out her binoculars and pulled them into a closer view. It was the first time either of them had ever seen wild deer. A breeze from the west rattled the leaves of the poplars behind them, and a large grey bird flew up from the underbrush, the clap of its wings like applause. Their lunch consisted of rich, creamy salads they had never tasted before, and were so good they had to restrain themselves from breaking the safe-seals on their supper rations to sample them as well.
Bowden went to check on the horses, which they’d tethered close by. Large and stolid animals, more Clydesdale than Arabian in their ancestry, they were good-tempered and responsive. She watched their huge teeth tearing at the plentiful grass. She inflated one of the drink-bowls, filled it with water, and took it over to them. Her horse emptied it in almost one swallow, and Delacour’s horse would probably have inhaled the bowl if Bowden hadn’t snatched it away. She filled it again. As she walked back to them, she noticed for the first time her horse’s penis swinging between his legs. She stopped still and stared as it pushed rawly through its outer skin and protruded like a thick red forearm from its sleeve. It was a long time since she’d seen a male animal with its penis extended.
